


so like fear

by sequestering



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Arendelle, F/F, Gen, POV Outsider, and assorted Arendellian citizens, semi-realistic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21599170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequestering/pseuds/sequestering
Summary: “What do you think she’s like? The princess?”Gretel grimaces, “I heard she’s the ugliest maiden in all Arendelle. She can’t leave the castle because she frightens little children.”(or: five moments in Elsa's life, told through the eyes of a stranger)
Relationships: Elsa/Honeymaren (Disney)
Comments: 83
Kudos: 815





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Two fics later, I am still trying to exorcise myself of this pairing.
> 
> Warnings: bad language, mentions of animal death (not Sven or any animal we’ve met in canon) and heavy anachronism.

i.

Ida doesn’t break her own finger with the hammer but it’s a near thing.

“Fuck! Fuckity fuck! What the fuck?” She shrieks, nursing the rapidly swelling digit. She hasn’t missed a spoke like that in years. Stars, it’s such a rookie error and Erik will have a fit if he finds out. The one time she isn’t wearing her gloves, damn it.

Gretel edges back towards the door. “Ah, right, sorry. Now looks like a bad time. I’ll just –”

“You’re here now,” Ida sighs. “Might as well tell me whatever it was.” The finger looks like it’ll be okay. Might lose the nail but probably not broken.

“The King and Queen are dead.”

That puts paid to the rest of the afternoon’s work.

She and Gretel end up in The Five Candles. It’s the shabbiest tavern in all of Arendelle but it’s dirt cheap and no one’s got food poisoning in months. Squeezed into a booth with Tomas, Dotta and a few of the other apprentices, they huddle together over mugs of warm mead. They’re all looking shell-shocked. Soren is sniffing quietly into Fina’s shoulder. Dotta is biting anxiously at her nails. No one has much to say.

It’s not that Ida was particularly fond of Agnarr and Iduna – it feels churlish now but she’d always thought them stuck up, all that time spent shut up alone in their huge castle – but they were decent rulers. Trade was good, food was plentiful and any intrepid raiders were quickly seen off. Arendelle could do worse.

Besides, they were familiar. Ida had never known a day of her life without the placid face of King Agnarr staring up at her off coins and shop walls. His presence was as steady and unremarkable as the changing of the seasons. Now he and Iduna were gone.

Dotta breaks the silence. “What do you think she’s like? The princess?”

They all know which princess she’s talking about. Anna is well-known around Arendelle. Her childhood “adventures” had led to more than one city-wide search only to find her safely ensconced at the baker’s, little cheeks bulging with pastries. Ida had run into her at the smithy’s once. Sweet kid.

Elsa is another matter entirely.

Gretel grimaces, “I heard she’s the ugliest maiden in all Arendelle. She can’t leave the castle because she frightens little children.”

“How could you say that?” Soren bursts out, red-rimmed eyes comically wide. “She’s very ill and that’s all there is to it. Poor girl. And she just lost her parents.”

“Then why no doctors? If I was king and my kid was that sick, I’d try every doctor in the land.”

“Just because they didn’t personally give you the details of the princess’ medical care doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

“That’s all rubbish.” The table quietens. Tomas has a brother who’s high up in the palace guard and he’s not usually one for gossip. “My brother say she’s cursed, cursed something bad.”

Ida shivers. She doesn’t know why – it’s not cold. What curse could be so awful that a child had to be kept locked away from all human contact? What would a person have to do to deserve something like that?

“Yeah, cursed with ugliness,” Gretel sniggers. The conversation devolves into relieved silliness. Ida lets it wash over her.

Princess Elsa is Arendelle’s best kept secret. She’s the spookiest ghost story at every kid’s birthday party and the favourite conspiracy theory of every drunkard. In three years’ time, she’ll be their queen.

ii.

Stuffy, formal events are decidedly not Ida’s thing. There’s the polite small talk, the oh-so-important networking, the hours of standing around and, worst of all, the dresses. Ida is currently squeezed into one of Gretel’s cast-offs. It had looked lovely on its former owner but was clearly not designed for a woman with shoulders broader than her hips. Whatever, Ida never need wear it again. So long as she doesn’t breathe out too much, it’ll be fine.

Rather, that’s what she had told herself six hours ago when she, Gretel and Dotta had set out from the east quarter to the palace. On Soren’s insistence, the group had arrived at the lower courtyard four hours before the coronation even began. To be fair to Soren, he hadn’t been wrong that every surface with a view of the procession would be packed with people but six hours is a very long time to wait.

They’ve tried to keep busy. One enterprising kid started taking bets on the new Queen’s condition which provided plenty of entertainment. Gretel’s got ten kroner on her being hideous. Ida’s considering putting five on a curse, maybe lycanthropy or something equally unlikely, when she hears the screams.

The temperature plunges. Then it’s chaos.

Ida was born in Arendelle. She knows the cold, they all do. But she’s never felt anything like this.

It’s agony just to breathe, the freezing air stabbing at her throat, sending her into painful, wracking coughing fits. After a moment of the cold, ice begins to crystallise on her eyelashes, eyebrows and loose hair. A few minutes after that she realises her fingers, clasped tight around Gretel’s, have turned grey. She hadn’t even realised they were numb.

She’s freezing, panicking and ill-dressed for a surprise ice age. She’s too far from home to get to safety without perishing. Even Dotta’s house, a five minute walk away, seems unreachable.

That the palace is well-prepared for entertaining and that Princess Anna unreservedly opens the supply room is what saves them. Fur-wrapped attendants begin to hurry party-goers into the palace’s Great Hall where they are greeted with roaring fires, warm cloaks and hot soup. Ida finds Soren and Tomas and Dotta and Fina and as she checks them off she feels the panic begin to retreat, she swallows down the scream caught in her throat.

Thy huddle together, speaking in soft whispers. No one’s sure what happened. Ida hears dozens of rumours, each more ridiculous than the last: Queen Elsa’s secret lover proposed to Princess Anna so the Queen tried to kill her sister; the ice god fell in love with the Queen so kidnapped her to be his bride; the Duke of Weselton fumbled an assassination attempt on the Queen who fled the city; the Queen showed her true form as a Jotun beast.

Much later, Gretel is informed by her young bookie that the Queen is, in fact, stunningly beautiful so she’s lost the ten kroner. Ida thinks about what she saw: the flash of brilliant white hair, the too-pale skin and the sharp crack of freshly formed ice. She didn’t see beauty, she saw a monster.

iii.

It becomes known as the Great Thaw. It’s a good name. Catchy. Sounds good in the million and one different versions of the story that Ida hears over the following months. It gets to the point where she’s convinced that the bards have begun competing over who can squeeze the most purple prose into their description of the thawing city. Sure, Ida will admit that it was a pretty impressive sight but no one needs six hundred lines of dactylic hexameter for what took under three minutes in real time.

And as the event settles slowly into memory and song, so too does life settle back into welcome normality. With perhaps one exception.

Ida hears it from Fina first. Only a week after the Great Thaw, she clatters into The Five Candles, shop ribbon still wound in her dark hair and apron all askew, red cheeked and near panting with excitement. The haberdashery, she reveals, was graced by a particularly distinguished, royal even, pair of guests earlier that day.

There’s a sudden clamour of people looking to buy her a drink and ply her for details. Not that Fina needs much persuasion. She waxes lyrical to her attentive audience about the Queen’s beauty and poise, about the Princess’ warm enthusiasm, about their peculiar but charming animated snowman.

Ida snorts into her mead at that. Forgive her for doubting an animated snowman could ever be anything more than extremely creepy. But Fina is clearly enchanted.

“Princess Anna was so kind about my embroidery. She told Miss Hansen that I have a good eye for colour and that I’m to use whatever threads I like on her gown.” She sighs dreamily, hands already sketching out patterns in spilled water on the table.

Fina has a true talent and it’s about time that’s recognised. Ida knows that. She should be pleased for her friend, and really she is. But there’s a small part of her that wants Fina, wants everyone she cares about, as far as possible from the royal family.

Sadly, it seems that Queen Elsa and Princess Anna are keen to involve themselves as much as possible in public life. After so many years of secrecy and seclusion, it’s bizarre now to hear stories of them popping up on every street corner.

Anders claims the Queen rigged up a permanent cold storage space for his fish. Oaken tells anyone who’ll listen about how he gave Princess Anna one of his signature manicures – and that she booked a second appointment. Little Christa and Flora ran into the square last week clutching a pile of beautifully crafted animal figures, carved out of magically eternal ice.

Ida listens to their excited stories and smiles through her teeth.

It’s not that she dislikes the Queen. It’s just that it’s hard sometimes to see a tiny ice reindeer and not to think about a larger ice reindeer. Arendelle lost eight reindeer during the freeze. Soldiers were quick to gather as many as they could into stables, thickly insulated with straw, but they couldn’t get them all. A few were found days later, frozen solid were they stood. If things had been different, if the palace doors had been less welcoming, well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

So suffice to say Ida is not best pleased to find Queen Elsa at the door of the forge, early one February morning.

“What do you want?” That comes out sounding ruder than Ida had intended. “Your majesty,” she tacks on at the end. It doesn’t help much. Thank goodness Erik is out or he’d have her head, disrespecting the most exciting clientele ever to set foot into the shop. Or onto the door mat at least.

The Queen looks somewhat taken aback. “This is the forge, yes?”

Ida nods.

“I’ve got this,” the Queen says, fumbling an elaborately engraved shield boss out of her bag. “I was hoping you could fit it into a shield.”

“I can have a look. Come on in – erm, if you want.” She pauses then remembers. “Your majesty.”

Ida takes the boss over to her workshop. It’s heavy, made of good-quality iron. Probably straight out of the royal treasury given the intricate patterning around the circumference. She sets to work measuring and polishing. It’s the kind of brainless work she can do in her sleep and doesn’t do much to dissipate the building awkward silence.

“It’s a present. For my sister’s boyfriend.” The Queen breaks in. That must be Kristoff, the herdsman who was raised by reindeer, trolls or wolves depending on who you ask. Ida favours reindeer.

“I’m sure he’ll be very happy with it,” says Ida, looking up to smile-grimace. The silence returns.

Ida’s never seen the Queen without her usual adoring entourage, Princess Anna and the snowman. Under the open sky with her sister, Queen Elsa is confident and regal, beautiful and terrifying. It’s funny though. In the shabby interior of the forge she looks lesser, wilted maybe. All that ghastly, wild beauty, the sheer white of her hair and skin: in the flickering orange light of the fire she just looks bleached.

Without her sister, the confidence is flimsy too. Beneath the cut glass accent and achingly sharp posture, her shoulder are set, stiff and uncomfortable. Ida is reminded of the ill-fitting dresses she borrows from Gretel. Elsa’s dresses fit her slim frame perfectly but the thick, dark fabric is wasted on someone who doesn’t feel the cold. They’re a pretence, a plea to fit in.

“Is the shield meant to be primarily practical or decorative?” Ida asks.

The Queen jumps on an opener and the two manage a stilted conversation until the end of the consultation. They agree for the shield to be picked up in five days’ time.

Normally Ida would seal the bargain with a handshake. She doesn’t offer her hand to the Queen. Nor does the Queen offer her own. But they do smile and when the Queen leaves, she stops to give Vogg, the forge’s semi-feral Forest Cat, a pet on the way out.


	2. Chapter 2

iv.

So spring turns to summer, summer to autumn, and autumn to winter again. The years slip by and their magical Queen becomes a part of life, one more Arendellian oddity to mention in the guidebooks.

Ida still ducks out of conversations about the latest royal gossip, Dotta still laughingly calls her a baby republican, but she has stopped flinching at the Queen’s weekly iced fireworks displays. She even attended one once. Standing arm in arm with Gretel, mugs of hot mulled wine warming their hands, watching the glittering explosions far above their heads. Ida will admit it was pretty special.

That’s a good distance for magic. Far above her head, safely out of range.

When she wakes to the sound of a thousand glass windows breaking just outside her door, that’s magic which is too close.

Ida’s out of bed, feet slipping into her shoes and arms reaching for a coat, before she is fully aware what’s going on. She stumbles at the door and thinks it’s the fear or her sleep-soft brain. Then the floor moves and she knows it’s not.

She pushes out the door and onto the still empty street. Her neighbours are moving around, doors banging, windows being thrown open, muffled shouts filling the air. Ida barely notices them. The street is covered in thousands, no hundreds of thousands, of tiny iced diamonds. They tinkle lightly as the street beneath them undulates. In any other circumstance, it might be the most beautiful and ethereal sight Ida has ever seen.

Then the street jerks again and Ida is knocked off her feet. The illusion is broken. There’s no beauty here, only danger.

Her neighbours begin to join her on the street just as the lamps go out, fire flashing a pale purple before extinguishing itself. They’re dressed in the same bizarre assortment of clothing she is, pyjamas and the first warm clothes they saw, bed socks peaking out from snow boots.

There’s shouting coming from the inner quarter of the city. Oaken rounds the corner, ruddy face a shocking red and huge chest heaving, “Get to the cliffside!”

“What? Why?” That’s old Niklas, the cobbler who lives three houses down, his voice is gruff but there’s panic edging around the vowels.

“We’re evacuating,” Oaken huffs out. “Queen’s orders.”

The street jolts again, more fiercely this time, like some mammoth beast under the city were forcing its way up through the ground. That gets people going, rushing toward the trickle of escapees heading down the high street. The trickle is fast becoming a flood.

Ida turns to the old woman across the street.

“Can I help you there, Miss Creel?” she calls. Miss Creel lives opposite Ida, she’s a kind old lady, a former soldier whose skin is now so wrinkled and leathery as to look to be made from parchment. She’s clinging to her doorstep, unwilling to stay in the convulsing city, but not trusting her shaky legs with the street. She nods sharply, eyes glittering with the relief she’s too proud to voice. Ida wraps a steadying arm around her waist and the two begin to hobble up the street.

The journey up to the cliffside is a quick one. Fifteen minutes’ walk on a clear day. With the wind screaming through Arendelle’s narrow streets, with the ground buckling beneath their feet and the whole population pushing in the same direction, it feels much longer. Ida sees Soren with his two little sisters clinging to his back, Tilda tripping over mismatched boots, even Princess Anna herding along stragglers. There’s no time to stop and the wind’s too loud to talk.

By the time they stumble into the cliffside clearing, Ida is half carrying Miss Creel. The old lady’s bony fingers have dug deep red welts into the flesh of her arm. Not that Ida can complain, Miss Creel will have bruises from Ida’s arms around her waist for weeks.

Ida would love nothing more than to collapse to the solid, steady ground but there's no time for that.

The rest of the day is a blur. The cliffside is well-stocked. It is, after all, the oldest evacuation point in Arendelle’s history and has sheltered them faithfully through the centuries; from sea-raiders, from fire and floods, from invading enemies in times of war. But setting up an emergency evacuation point for several thousand people will always be an exercise in semi-controlled chaos.

As for the cause of the natural world deciding to tear itself to pieces?

The Queen explains this was due to the awakening of angry spirits. Then she races off northwards leaving behind a struggling steward, a clan of trolls and more questions than answers.

“But who woke the spirits in the first place?” asks Gretel, while their small group pokes at brined-mystery-meat broth during a quick refuel break. Pitching a small city of moth-eaten tents is hungry work.

There's silence, an answering no one wants to voice hanging in the air.

“It’s the witch’s fault,” spits Florian, nodding darkly in the direction the Queen and her retinue took off in. "And don't pretend like you weren't all thinking it." He’s a blunt man, not the type to hide behind pretty words.

Another uncomfortable quiet falls. The Queen is popular and the Princess even more so. They’re good people, kind and generous. But a good ruler needs to be more than a good person. For the second time in only three years, Queen Elsa’s kingdom lies empty, ravaged by magics she woke. Her people, homeless, hopeless and destitute, are gathered in a hastily erected refugee camp.

Ida is too tired even to be angry; tired of tents, tired of the cold, tired of magic. She wants her home, her cat and the warmth of the thick blanket her grandfather knitted before he passed. But those aren't things she can have.

“Only one who fix this mess is the Queen,” says Oaken. “Back to work now. Lots to do.”

v.

They wait on that cliffside for two days.

Arendelle is a tight-knit community. When something threatens them, they pull together. That’s how it’s always been.

They tell the children that it’s an adventure, something like a holiday, a really big sleepover. There are some complaints about wanting toys or a certain blanket but for the most part they’re mollified. All the kids end up bundled into one large tent, sleeping piled up on top of one another, puppy dog style.

They don’t tell the children that they don’t know when, if ever, they’ll be able to go home. That’s something for the adults to discuss later, fears entrusted to the gloom.

When the work slows, Ida sits at the edge off the cliff and looks out over Arendelle. Like this, it’s less a city than a skeleton. Empty of its people, of the bustle of life, of the singing and the dancing, the only movement is the sinister roiling of the cobbled streets. It looks like it’s pained.

“It’s so small from here,” says Fina. “I could reach out and crush it with a hand.”

“Please don’t,” Dotta snarks. That gets a tired chuckle.

Arendelle is small. Compared to the great mechanical city Ida’s mother came from, compared even to the Southern Isles, Arendelle is less a city than a large village. But it’s theirs. Ida doesn’t know what they’ll do if they can’t go back.

Their wait ends on the third day. It ends with a pitiless, towering wall of water thundering towards their little city. Ida has heard stories of the Great Flood which the gods sent to punish humanity for their avarice, which flooded the land and destroyed everything it touched. It must have looked, she thinks numbly, something like this. Unfeeling, unknowing, uncaring. Monstrous.

Only there’s something moving faster than the wave. Something riding the crest. Ida blinks and blinks again because her eyes cannot possibly be seeing that right. A pale figure in white robes, with brilliant hair streaming out behind her, atop a horse formed of shifting sea foam. In seconds, the pale figure outstrips the wave, turns and raises a hand.

The world turns to blue.

Goose bumps crawl up Ida’s arms. She can taste the metallic tang of the magic, the air is choked with it, the ground shakes with it. The wave stops.

The figure in white lowers her arms. It’s Queen Elsa.

Or rather, it’s Queen Elsa as she might be. Queen Elsa without her reassuring human trappings, without the pretence, without the charade. She’s not human but nor is she monstrous. She’s something else entirely.

She raises an arm in their direction then turns her steed and charges back northwards.

She leaves the air thick with magic.

(vi)

These days their former Queen is rarely seen around Arendelle. Perhaps that’s for the best.

During her visits to the palace, she is greeted with equal parts adoration and unease. Princess Elsa, as she is now called, is Arendelle’s unquestioned saviour and no amount of gratitude could ever be enough. The image of a lone, pale figure withstanding an apocalyptic wave will be one that lives on in legend.

But living legends are more complicated than those in history books. This is a woman with the power of the gods, a woman whose steps are dogged by destiny, a woman who is not altogether human. As all of Arendelle has seen, it can be dangerous to stand too close to that kind of magic.

Princess Elsa’s first formal public appearance since the coronation is at the wedding of Queen Anna. It’s quite the wedding. Near the whole city is in attendance; the ceremony is a delight and the party afterwards, well, it’s one to remember.

Hours after the celebrations began in earnest, face flushed with drink and feet aching from dancing, Ida escapes Gretel’s enthusiastic clutches to the perfectly-maintained palace gardens. It’s there, while she’s leaning quietly against an outside door, waiting for her head to stop spinning, that she sees them.

Blazing a stark white against the dark of the night sky, Princess Elsa is hard to miss. She’s bare-foot in the grass, shoulders bared to the icy wind, unabashedly comfortable in the night’s chill. Ida shivers looking at her. She doesn’t know whether it’s cold or the memory of magic on her tongue.

The Princess’ companion is a woman. She’s dressed in outlandish clothes, all rich browns and unfamiliar, geometric patterning.

They’re holding hands. The strange woman leaning into Princess Elsa’s side, totally at ease. Ida idly wonders whether the Princess is as cold to touch as she is to look at. If she is then the stranger is used to it. There’s an easiness to their embrace, one born of affection and long familiarity; the kind Ida’s parents used to share.

Ida watches them converse quietly, the occasional low laugh drifting across the garden. Princess Elsa looks happy. They both do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NB: It was pointed out to me that my use of the word republican might be a cause for some consternation. Ida has republican leanings in the sense that she tends towards abolishing the monarchy. Nothing to do with modern American politics.

**Author's Note:**

> I am on [Tumblr](https://sequestering.tumblr.com/).


End file.
